High School Spotlight

Dublin Scioto's State Qualifying 4x8 Relay Team
Sakiko Minagawa, Katie Papesh, Minori Minagawa, and Keelin Gorman

   The Ohio state meet.  For most local high school runners, reaching the big meet is the ultimate goal.  Racing through the district and regional meets, only a select handful qualify on to the championships themselves.  One bad race, one mistimed kick, or one dropped baton, and a season can end far short of the state meet.  Put everything together just right though, and anything can happen.  That’s exactly what happened for the girl’s 4x800m relay from Dublin Scioto. 

   “The 4x8, that was the one relay I knew we could get out,” Coach Matt Suttle says of his outlook on the state meet going into this past season.  In his first year as head track coach at Dublin Scioto, Suttle was optimistic despite the history of the event.  Only a year earlier, Scioto’s girls had just snuck out of the district meet by less than 0.2 seconds.  At the regional meet, they’d missed qualifying for state by almost 10 seconds, and two of the four girls from that relay had graduated, leaving the team seemingly short on depth.  On paper, it seemed as though Scioto should have been a long shot at best to reach the state meet. 

      Add in two freshmen phenoms, a junior basketball star, and a former dancer though, and suddenly you have a whole new team.  With Sakiko & Minori Minagawa, Katie Papesh, and Keelin Gorman on the relay, suddenly anything was possible.  Even the state meet. 

The First Leg
       “Our team was so deep, we never ran this bunch together until Districts,” Coach Suttle says of the quartet that Sakiko Minagawa led off at the state meet.  “I think that surprised a lot of people because we were able to drop a lot of time in just one week.”  Until the post-season, both Sakiko and her twin Minori had focused on the 3200m rather than the relay, despite the fact that both girls are 2:21 800m runners.  Adding the duo into the relay at the end of the season gave the relay an instant boost that propelled them on to the state meet and Sakiko’s place on the starting line.  

       “It was nerve wracking,” Sakiko says, talking of the pressures of leading off the relay.  “Really, I was nervous but excited at the same time.”  To help Sakiko and her teammates relax before that big moment on the track, the foursome had spent the state meet weekend together.  “We stayed the night together,” Sakiko says.  “We watched Step Brothers, went shopping, took an ice bath,” she adds.  “We weren’t thinking of State until we were there.”   Once there though, Sakiko and the Scioto girls were ready to run.  The All State 3200m runner took off from the line with the crack of the gun and churned out 800m of all out effort to pass the baton off to a first year track star…

Second Leg 
        In her first track season, junior Katie Papesh has found her stride already.  “I was still playing AAU,” the shooting guard 
says of pulling double duty on both a club basketball team and the Scioto track team.  “It was really tiring.” 

Despite the hectic schedule that came with juggling two sports, Katie made sure to prioritize her running.  “I was pretty 
focused on track,” says Katie.  “It was my first year doing track, but I was really focused once we started running.”  
With several years of cross country under her belt, it didn’t take long for Katie to find success on the track either.  
Surprising everyone, she ran to a district championship in the mile and helped to turn the Scioto 4x800m into a regional power.  

At the state meet, Katie ran second in the line-up.  “It was crazy,” she says of the atmosphere at the state meet.  
“I wasn’t expecting it to be that big.  At first, I was shocked.  I’d never gone to watch before, and I didn’t know what to expect.”  
With the crowd screaming, Katie sprinted around the track to finish off her first track season as she handed off the baton 
to the third leg of the relay…  

Third Leg
      “I kept seeing her on the internet,” Minori Minagawa says of sister Sakiko.  “She kept looking up everyone’s times.”  While 
Sakiko ate up every bit of information that she could, Minori tried to ignore the other times and stats.  Even once the relay had 
reached the stadium for the state meet, Minori shut things out.  “I wasn’t really looking at the crowd,” she says of the packed grandstands
 that towered over the track.  

      Like her sister, Minori was reaching the end of an amazing freshman year of running and racing.  A state qualifier in the 3200m, 
Minori’s state meet was only just beginning with the running of the 4x800m.  “I try to focus on one event at a time,” she says.  “For
 the 4x8, you have teammates with you.  That’s more nerve wracking.”  Excitable but humble, like her sister, Minori wasn’t about 
to let her teammates down.  Grabbing the baton from Katie, Minori clicked off a 2:21 PR time as she handed off to the final leg of the race…

Anchor
            “To be honest, I barely remember Keelin being on the team,” Coach Suttle laughs as he talks about Keelin Gorman’s freshman year.  
“She wasn’t what you’d call serious.”  “At practice, I used to run to Kroger,” the junior star admits.  “I didn’t get in shape.”  There’s a 
lot of laughter as she talks about that freshman year.  Things went so badly, Keelin actually quit running altogether and focused 
on dance, a passion of hers since sixth grade.  Something lured her back to the team this winter though.  “I came into the season serious 
because Suttle said the 4x8 is going to state.  That’s all I thought about.”   That total change in attitude transformed Keelin into a 2:20 
800m runner, quick enough to qualify her for the regional in the open 800m.  Her ability to close hard earned her the anchor spot on 
the state-qualifying relay.  

            “I’d never run with so many fast runners,” Keelin says of the crowd of girls on the track at state.  “I try not to watch the races,” she adds, dealing with the pressures of anchor by not letting herself get caught up in watching the early stages of the race.  Earlier in the season, she’d run as lead-off, but Keelin’s ability to finish off a strong 800m with a kick earned her the opportunity to cross the finish line of the state meet for her team. 

Beyond the finish line

            Fifteenth place at the state meet is only a first step for a foursome that all come back next year for another year of racing.  The Scioto girls have big goals, and those goals start this summer as they prepare for cross country.  
           “The twins threaten me daily,” Keelin jokes of the Minagawa sisters.  “I’m running cross country for them.” 
            “We want to go to state in cross,” Katie adds.  As a senior next year, she and Keelin “want to go out with a bang” they say.  “We have the same expectations as we had in track,” she adds.  That means the state meet and a chance to run with the best in the state. 
            “The goal is not only to get to state,” Coach Suttle adds.  “The goal is to get to state and do some damage.” 
            With an experienced foursome back next year to lead the team into the cross country season, the potential to “do some damage” at the state meet is definitely there.  With one state meet under their belts, the Scioto girls are ready to turn some heads. 

Thanks to the relay for a great interview. Hope to see you at the big dance in 2010!

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